One of the season’s most anticipated novels by Peter Geye, adventures on the Mississippi, a cold-case mystery and memoirs of a gay veteran are on today’s varied reading menu made up of books by Minnesota authors launching this month.
“A Lesser Light”: by Peter Geye (University of Minnesota Press, $27.95)
”I am not a preacher. No ma’am. It’s just a beautiful sentiment, this line I am recalling. It seems right for the moment.” He waited for her approval. When she nodded, he said “I believe it says, regarding the creation of the world, that God created two lights. A greater one to rule the day, and a lesser light to rule the night.” — from “A Lesser Light”
Peter Geye (Courtesy of the author)
In his luminous new novel, Peter Geye gives us love and lust, God and science, heavens and deep water, light and dark, and a cast of characters so vividly drawn you are in their minds, hearts, souls. It’s set in a lighthouse on Lake Superior, where the great inland sea has its own moods and is the apparent dwelling place of an omniscient narrator whose comments begin every chapter.
It’s 1910 and Willa, who majored in astronomy at Radcliffe College, is urged by her calculating mother to marry Theodulf Sauer after Willa’s father dies, leaving wife and daughter destitute. Willa and Theo are an odd match in their unconsummated marriage, this young, educated woman and emotionally shut-down Sauer, scion of a prominent, wealthy Duluth Catholic family. The couple doesn’t realize they met years earlier when Willa donned men’s clothing to play the piano at the all-male Mason’s lodge.
Theo, an egotist, has just been made master lighthouse keeper at the new Gininwabiko lighthouse. He expects his wife to attend to domestic life, cooking and keeping their home tidy. But Willa is more interested in the heavens, especially the coming of Halley’s comet. Theo is afraid of this fiery phenomenon, writing to a spiritual mentor to ask if the comet’s tail is poisonous to humans and what scripture says about it.
Willa and Theo sometimes try to understand one another but more often are tense and sometimes hostile. Willa, a careless homemaker, is lonely. From her window she can see the dock of fisherman Matt and his orphaned niece, Silje, whose parents have just drowned. Silje, who has “summoning powers,” delights Willa and they form a friendship as Willa becomes attracted to Matt. Theo, meanwhile, spends nights tending the big light, brooding about religion and recalling with shame and desire a brief affair he had with a man in Paris.
Geye’s writing is lush, from evoking the sounds, smells and moods of Lake Superior to the mechanics of keeping the lighthouse light functioning to Willa’s amusement at the pomposity of her husband’s uniformed visiting bosses.
(Courtesy of the author)
Secondary characters are as carefully drawn as the protagonists. Willa makes friends with the wives of her husband’s two junior lighthouse keepers and one of them, a wise older woman, helps Willa understand the duty of lighthouse tenders’ wives, whether she likes it or not. Willa’s mother, who is not there when her daughter needs her, cares only for herself, and Theo’s deceased father still haunts his son, whom he saw as worthless. Residents in towns from Two Harbors, Grand Marais and Gunflint show us the variety of people who lived along the North Shore at the turn of the 20th century.
Geye, who lives in his native Minneapolis, is the author of the Eide Family trilogy “The Lighthouse Road,” “Wintering” (Minnesota Book Award), and “Northernmost.” His most recent was “The Ski Jumpers,” published in 2023, now available in paperback.
With each book Geye has gained more fans. He’s surely cemented his place as a leading author with “A Lesser Light,” which is getting glowing advance reviews. What no critic seems able to articulate is the mystery and wonder inherent in this story.
Geye will launch his novel at 7 p.m. April 15 with a party at Norway House, 913 E. Franklin Ave., Mpls., presented by Valley Bookseller of Stillwater and Literature Lovers’ Night Out. $20. For information, go to Valleybookseller.com/events/calendar.
Other metro-area events in Geye’s statewide publicity tour include a 7 p.m. reading April 28 at the University of St. Thomas, 2115 Summit Ave., St. Paul; April 29, Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior; May 3, Roseville Public Library and Cream & Amber, Hopkins,;and May 10, Big Hill Books, Mpls.
“Pushing the River”: by Frank Bures (Minnesota Historical Society Press, $24.95)
My limbs felt heavy. Water came over my chin, into my mouth. Everything felt hard now. Then, in a moment of clarity, a thought came into my head. It was not a question. It was not a possibility. It was not panic. It was just a fact, solid as a stone: I am not going to make it to that shore. — from “Pushing the River”
Part history of canoes and canoe races, part river adventures, part personal memories, Frank Bures shows his love for the Mississippi in this multi-genre paperback.
(Courtesy of the author)
Bures, an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in national publications such as Outside magazine, subtitles his tribute to the river “An Epic Battle, a Lost History, a Near Death, and Other True Canoeing Stories.”
The author is a child of the river, growing up in Winona with his friend JD Fratzke, who would go on to be a celebrated chef and restauranteur. His 2024 debut poetry collection, “River Language”, is also an ode to the Mississippi.
The first half of “Pushing the River ” is made up of detailed descriptions of the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby, an exhausting annual 450-mile race associated with the Minneapolis Aquatennial that ran on the Mississippi in the 1940s into the 1960s. The author introduces people such as canoe-racing legend Gene Jensen and members of the Native American Tibbetts family from the Leech Lake reservation, as well as telling the history of how canoes were built by the Ojibwe and used for centuries by fur traders and others. He explains how Jim and Bernie Smith’s design features are now part of contemporary canoe racing and early discussions about just what is a “canoe.”
Real-life stories depict dangers on the river, including how a couple survived being surrounded by the 2011 Pagami Creek fire in the Boundary Waters and the author’s near-death from hypothermia when his canoe tipped and threw him into icy water.
Bures will launch his book with a free program at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., in conversation with nature writer Cary Griffith.
“The Murder Show”: by Matt Goldman (Forge, $18.99)
They are the easiest of targets. Ethan feels a fear he’s never known, far above the modern-day angst he normally experiences. Faux problems that fester in the bubble of his insulated world. But canoeing over open water, defenseless in an aluminum craft that couldn’t stop a bullet any better than a sheet of paper, Ethan’s fear gets white hot. — from “The Murder Show”
(Courtesy of Forge Books)
Ethan Harris is not in a good place in this fast-paced mystery that also involves the river. His hit TV production, “The Murder Show,” might not see a fourth season if he doesn’t come up with a good idea, and he doesn’t have one. When a writers’ strike gives him free time, he heads home to Minnesota looking for inspiration and is welcomed by his childhood pal Ro Greeman, who was literally the girl next door. Ro, now a police officer, needs help investigating the death 22 years earlier of their classmate, Ricky, killed in a hit-and-run on a lonely county road. Ethan has nothing else to do so he joins her, thinking some sleuthing might unlock his imagination in writing the TV script.
As the partners dig more deeply into Ricky’s death, they discover other teenage boys have disappeared on lonely country roads far from their homes in the Twin Cities. When they get too close to solving the cold case, they are in danger, beginning with gunfire aimed at their vehicle. What part does one of Ro’s police colleagues play in this venture and why doesn’t Ethan trust him?
Goldman is a playwright and Emmy Award-winning television writer for “Seinfeld,” “Ellen” and other shows, as well as the author of four novels featuring lawyer Nils Shapiro, who makes a cameo appearance in this new stand-alone novel.
He will host a free meet-and-greet to launch his book from noon to 2 p.m. April 19 at Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls.
“The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship”: by Bronson Lemer (University of Wisconsin Press, $19.95)
I picture a character like X-Men’s Nightcrawler, a creature I emulated in my twenties with my constant moving, my nonstop wanderlust. Job to Job. Place to Place. Boyfriend to Boyfriend. I never stayed with anything for longer than two years. I morphed, changed, moved on when the camouflage wore off, when I realized I would probably never fit in. — from “The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship”
(Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin Press)
St. Paul resident Lemer’s book of interconnected essays is not about warfare. Yes, the author served in South Korea and twice in Iraq. But this is really the story of a gay man trying desperately to be seen, which is difficult because he always holds back a part of himself, instead forging new personas of a confident, outgoing man.
In memories that drift between past and present, he recalls trying to fit in, as when he goes with members of his platoon to meet “juicy girls” in Korea. When one woman tries to make contact, he nearly freezes with embarrassment. And so he becomes rootless, spending two years teaching in China, then teaching on a Navy cruiser carrying missiles, always striving for what seems to be an unreachable goal of becoming a different person. Happily, he does find love and marriage in the end as he settles into the man he was meant to be.
Lemer, a fine writer, is the author of “The Last Deployment: How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq.” He will introduce “The Veteran’s Guide …” at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., in conversation with author Chris Stedman, religion and philosophy professor at Augsburg University.
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